Monday, January 27, 2014

(No) Honor Among Thugs

Like countless
other people, Los Angeles resident Sergio Arreola was the victim of criminal violence by
the police, and forced to defend himself in court because his assailants were encouraged
to lie and allowed to do so without punishment.

The Pomona,
California police officers who beat Arreola in front of his wife told the
terrified woman that they would make sure that the victim lost his job. That
sadistic prediction was fulfilled within a day, after which Arreola discovered
that his arrest had made him practically unemployable, and his family
confronted the prospect of losing their home.

Soon after
Arreola posted bail, three of his family members were arrested on contrived
charges and threatened with deportation. The LA County DA’s office dropped a
charge of assaulting an officer, but insisted on pressing the charges of
resisting arrest and obstruction. Six months after the assault, Arreola was
acquitted by a jury that – unlike a similar panel convened more recently in
nearby Orange County – was honest enough to act upon the abundant evidence that
the cops who attacked Arreola had done so without justification, and lied about
their actions.

Arreola’s occupation
may provide a partial explanation for that jury’s willingness to acquit him: At
the time he was beaten and abducted by two police officers in Pomona, Arreola

After completing
his shift on April 11, 2012, Arreola received a call from his wife asking him
to help out her brother, whose car had suffered two flat tires. When he reached
the scene, his wife was there, along with a tow truck operator. His wife was
speaking with Eric Hamilton, an officer with the Pomona Police Department.

Arreola
deferentially replied that he worked for the LAPD, and offered to retrieve his
official jewelry, which was pinned to a jacket in the trunk of his car.

“I didn’t f**king
ask where it was – I said `Show me your badge,’” sneered Hamilton.

Arreola complied,
grabbing his jacket and showing it to Hamilton.That prompted Hamilton to berate Arreola for opening his trunk “without
being ordered to do so.” Pointing to a spot near the scene of his
brother-in-law’s breakdown, Hamilton commanded Arreola to move his car to the
parking place under threat of arrest.

By the time
Arreola had re-parked his car, a second Pomona Officer bearing the ironic name Chris Tucker
had arrived “Code 3” – that is, with lights and siren running. After Tucker
conferred briefly with Hamilton, he ordered Arreola to turn around and place
his hands on his head.

“Why are you
doing this?” Arreola plaintively inquired, after telling Tucker about a
“back-up” weapon in the pocket of his pants. “I did not do anything wrong.”

Like thousands of
other people in similar predicaments, Arreola turned to fellow citizens for
protection against the police. He urged several bystanders to record the
incident on their cellphones. This prompted immediate retaliation from Tucker,
who jerked Arreola backwards, then began punching him in the ribs. Hamilton
quickly joined in. The attackers threw the victim to the ground – one of them
savagely torqueing his left arm while the other applied a choke-hold. All of
this was set to the accompaniment of the familiar chorus chanted by rapists and
police: “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!”

Under even the
most emancipated definition of “reasonable force,” all of this was unjustified
– and none of it was mentioned in the official reports filed by Hamilton and
Tucker. Engaging in what trained
liars in uniform
describe as “creative writing,” the officers claimed that Arreola was angry and
put up a fight when they attempted to arrest him, which supposedly justified a
violent response.

Treatment of this
kind is not uncommon as a form of “street justice” inflicted as summary
punishment for “contempt of cop.” But Arreola was anything but contemptuous.
Furthermore, he was a member – albeit on a probationary basis – of the Exalted
Brotherhood of Official Coercion. Members of that caste generally receive
“professional courtesy,” rather than an unprovoked beat-down. What, if
anything, did he do to precipitate such abuse?

Demonstrators protest killing of Andy Avila by Pomona PD.

One obvious
possibility is that the officers acted out of ethnic bigotry. Arreola, who is
of Mexican descent, received his citizenship following a five-year stint in the
Marines, including combat in Iraq.

Another potential
explanation is that the officers who assaulted Arreola did so out of what his subsequent lawsuit described as “professional jealousy”:
His job with the LAPD was better-compensated, and regarded as more glamorous,
than their posting in down-scale Pomona.

Resentment of
that nature would explain the vindictive pleasure Hamilton and Tucker displayed
as they taunted Arreola’s terrorized wife.

“Your husband
just lost his job,” Hamilton smugly told her after she had seen him beaten and
handcuffed. “I’m going to make sure your husband is never a police officer in
the State of California again.”

Within a day,
Arreola had been terminated from the LAPD and told to turn in his personal
effects kit, to which has been given the disturbingly appropriate nickname “War
Bag.” Since his arrest and termination made him ineligible to work with any
other law enforcement agency in California (pending his acquittal), Arreola
applied to re-enlist in the Marines – only to be turned down for the same
reason.

The DA’s office
was unwilling to drop the resisting arrest charge, demanding that Arreola
accept a guilty plea in exchange for probation.

“They’ve ruined
my life, they’ve ruined my name,” Arreola told his attorney as he rejected that
offer. “What’s the worst they can do – send me to jail?”

Following his
acquittal in December 2012, Arreola filed a federal lawsuit against Hamilton
and Tucker, as well as the City of Pomona.

In their reply to the lawsuit, the defendants predictably invoked the
evil doctrine of “qualified immunity.” The reply also retailed the
now-disproved claim that Arreola “refused to follow the reasonable instructions
and directions and commands of the police officers, and attempted to assault,
batter and use deadly force on the police officers, [and also] presented a
threat to others in the vicinity….”

Interestingly, the reply also asserted that the officers were not
liable for Arreola’s injuries, because the victim “voluntarily assumed the
risks involved in his conduct and appreciated the foreseeability of being
injured” by them.

Granted, that
claim was wedded to the perjured description of the incident offered by the
officers: On that construction, Arreola got what he deserved because he defied
the police. The incontrovertible truth is that he meekly submitted to every
demand they made – and was beaten and kidnapped by them anyway.

The irresistible
conclusion to be drawn from this is that by allowing police officers to ply
their violent trade among us, we all are voluntarily assuming “the risks
involved” and should appreciate “the foreseeability of being injured” by them
without cause or justification. After all, if there is no honor even among government-licensed
thugs, what hope is there for innocent and harmless people who come to their
attention?

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10 comments:

Francisco
said...

HAHAHAHA this is funny I hope Arreola didn't think the police would be nice to one of there own seriously there is no honor among thugs only survival of the sickest and meanest.

If knocking down a fellow cop to get ahead is an option they will take it there no friends there only tools to use and throw away such is the government greed and evil are good honor and integrity bad and its licensed killers in the movie lord of war Yuri Orlov knew this well and left the country before the US could scape goat him for whatever reason or no reason.

Truthfully i hope Arreola survives this and this becomes a wake up to the corruption in what he used to work in and government the marines didn't take him back so much for there slogan of honor and integrity

To Paul,The oinker will be dispensing his own brutality the very next time he's out cruising and plays the role of Kings' highwayman when he waylays one of his neighbors at gunpoint for forcible revenue extraction and quota-filling by issuing an extortion demand (traffic ticket)after having cherry-picked the poor sap out of the crowd for driving safely, er, "speeding" at 45 in a 40 along with everyone else on the road.

Didn't read any of the comments yet. Look at the outcome, the joke is on us as it always is. The criminals go free unscathed and unpunished... and the we pay restitution to the victim.

Go read some of the comments at policeone.com. If this story was about two costume wearing thugs who beat up some mundane, they would all be defedning the cops with no shame regardless of the story, details, facts.

Cops are such pathetic cry-baby victim wannabe's. They cry about being sued all the time, and how they should sue back. Their hypocrisy is pathetic. What do they care about being sued, even if they lose/settle... they are personally out nothing.